Customer Reviews

What to Wear to See the Pope: Stories

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This writer has a great use of language and can poke fun of an extensive vocabulary all the same. I am a book reviewer for a major newspaper and a published author as well, so I kiss a lot of toads to find the royalty that will go in our columns, this one made it in stellar fashion. I am including this as one of 2004's best debuts. I read much of this book while climbing a stairmaster at the gym. On three occasions people came up to me to ask me what it was that was "SO FUNNY" about the book, writing down the title to go find it. ENJOY!

In a voice that's distinctive and marvelously quirky, the author tells tales of domestic life that dance on the edge of the absurd but resonate with essential truth. The voice is so quirky that it would be easy for it to go over the top, or become cloying, but it never does. Lehner delights not just in chasing absurdities to comic lengths, but in playing with the language -- and while it can be irritating when writers toss in fancy words, it doesn't here. She's not showing off; she's rejoicing in the richness of the language. My favorite is a tale about a knife that seems to have a malicious mind of its own, but the story of a phantom limb runs a close second. And, throughout, these odd saints keep appearing, to delightful effect.

It does not do justice to this book to call it a collection of short stories, it's more a series of plunges into the same bracing swimming pool. I read it in one sitting and it played every variation of my laugh button. Ms. Lehner knows more about Saints than she needs to, but you don't have to be Catholic to enjoy the obsession. This book has enough family mustard so that in spite of the religion, the literary references and flawless punctuation you wonder at the end who might play each role when Hollywood gets it's crass teeth into it.